As we continued to work on Coda 2.5—a significant update that we’re really excited about—we continued to discover new corners of the app that presented challenges under sandboxing. Coda, to be fair, is a very complex developer tool and is something of a sandboxing worst-case scenario.

Apple, to their considerable credit, spent a lot of energy assisting us with ideas, workarounds, and temporary exemptions we might be able to use to get around some of the issues. Apple genuinely went above and beyond the call of duty, and we’re really thankful for their help. We got extremely close and jumped over a lot of tricky hurdles thanks to them.

Unfortunately, though, we’ve run out of time.

Coda 2.5 is essentially complete. But, we’re still encountering sandboxing challenges. So, in the interest of finally getting Coda 2.5 out the door and in the hands of you, our very eager and patient customers, we’ve decided it’s time to move on—for now.

In short: Coda 2.5 will not be sandboxed, and therefore will not be available in the Mac App Store.

Please note that this doesn’t mean Coda 2.5 was rejected by Apple, rather that we’re going ahead and proactively making this call since all Mac App Store apps are required to be sandboxed and Coda 2.5 will not be.

• What about iCloud Sync of my sites?

iCloud requires the App Store, so that’s out. But we have great news. We never want to short-change our paying customers, so we’ve spent many months working on Panic Sync, our own super-easy, super-secure syncing solution that gives you power over your data. And Panic Sync will work between Panic apps—Coda and Diet Coda to start. And Panic Sync is free. In short, we’ll trade you iCloud for something great.

• What about automatic updating?

Still there. Coda has a great built-in updater. In fact, you’ll get critical updates faster than ever before.

• What about easy installation on a new computer?

We love that part of the Mac App Store. Sigh. But from now on, you’ll have to download Coda 2.5 directly from our website. Hopefully, that’s a very minor inconvenience; we’ll make sure it downloads fast and easy.

• Will Coda ever be sandboxed or return to the App Store?

We hope so! We will always evaluate the possibility of sandboxing with each future release of Coda.

David

Let’s say, after you release Coda 2.5, my computer (and all of its backups) explodes, and I need to start fresh with a brand new Mac and I only ever purchased the Mac App Store version of Coda. What would I need to do?

(In other words, will Coda 2.0 remain on the App Store for this situation, or will you be removing it?)

Cabel

David: You will always be able to re-download the Mac App Store Coda you purchased. Our hope is to also provide free serial numbers to Mac App Store customers to ease installation in the future (assuming that’s allowed).

David

John

For me MAS is convenient (at times) but that’s about it.
The only software I’ve ever purchased from MAS is either exclusive (to MAS) or on special. Even then I find it irksome when non-MAS versions of apps I’ve purchased have been updated, but it’s weeks later when the same updates hit MAS. In this respect I avoid MAS whenever possible and is the reason I originally purchased Transmit and Coda directly from the lovely people at Panic.

BAzerty

Jack

I kind of feel bad for buying the Mac App Store version instead of directly from you guys, would much rather you have received the cut that Apple take as I know you’ll do something brilliant with the money! But at the time I thought iCloud was the advantage so that’s what got bought, ah well, what’s done is done!

Cabel

Jon: Direct Coda has always had the capability to “unlock” with the presence of a Mac App Store copy of Coda. This isn’t new and we’ve never been told that’s a problem? We’ll of course do our best to do this transition correctly.

awkbox

ikir

Very sad news… i love MAS, i know sandboxing is for our safety but Apple should give devs solutions to make everything in a safe way. I hope you can release Coda 2.5 on the Mac App Store in the future.

Kevin Martin

Brent

“Apple genuinely went above and beyond the call of duty, and we’re really thankful for their help. We got extremely close and jumped over a lot of tricky hurdles thanks to them.”

BUT, still you can’t get the App you want for your customers through their fingers and Sandboxing. I had to go over and buy TextExpander from SmilesSoftware for this exact reason, because they couldn’t deliver a update on the MAS that they wanted for the consumer.
Its will be a hot day in Antarctica before I buy another BIG name App in the MAS when I can get it cheaper from the Dev’s themselves.
Looking forward to 2.5 and am hoping there will be a 2.0 Diet Coda upgrade too :D :hint: :hint:

Keep up the great work Panic, you guys mage awesome Apps for our Macs . . . !!!

Michael Savich

Landon

Gerrit

All of my favorite apps seem to be App Store or Sandboxing “worst case scenarios”. I don’t really think it’s the apps. It also seems weird how so many apps are able to get exceptions… I bought 1Password from their website and it syncs via iCloud? You can download Xcode and it installs system tools? And Final Cut Pro X isn’t remotely sandboxed? And it downloads system updates? Well I guess this kills any potential future integration of Coda with Game Center.

Paul

As a developer and consumer, I have to say that I go out of my way to purchase apps *not* on the MAS. Ideology aside, there are many practical reasons to avoid it: sandboxing, iCloud/CoreData failures, the race-to-the-bottom on pricing, the lack of an upgrade policy, etc.. It’s unfortunate that a few applications are available there exclusively. The direct-sales model has worked well for a long time for software vendors. I realize that some developers want to reach a wider audience or use MAS-specific features like iCloud; however, I feel the negatives for both developers and consumers far outweigh the positives.

Dave

Frank

You guys are simply a class act. While i don’t own Coda, i do own Transmit and the now defunct CandyBar. When you decided to discontinue CandyBar you put up a notice and gave it away for free so as to not have new customers pay. That move and now this move with Coda sets you folks amongst devs that care about their customers and try to keep 1 step ahead in making things easier. Ok enough gushing.

Charlie

Mitchell

I’m not surprised the Mac App Store has been an issue. Many developers have been fighting Apple for years with some of these issues.

It still doesn’t excuse the major delays on getting Coda 2 updates to your users. We’ve been waiting ages for major updates. Meanwhile, Sublime Text, GitHub Atom and Adobe Brackets have been putting out great software with frequent updates and an extensive list of plugins that bring every feature imaginable to developers. You have competition that are blowing past you in responsiveness and listening to the community.

You aren’t Apple. Even if you were Apple, we buy their products not because they keep secrets and screw over early adopters. No, no. Those are the reasons we hate Apple. We buy their products for the attention to detail they put in. It’s worth the extra money for that.

I paid Panic a lot of money but so far I haven’t seen much for it. Coda 2 is barely an update to Coda. It’s missing a great deal of features that would make your customers lives easier. Your support staff has been rude every time I’ve asked “when will we see major updates”. And I’m only asking every 3 months or so. In the past 3 months, Adobe Brackets has progressed a tremendous amount. In the past 3 weeks, GitHub Atom has blown past you guys. So, once again, you have our money now show us what we get for it.

EricS

Mark W

I’ve been using Coda since the beginning and use Coda 2 from the store, while this is disappointing, it’s a non-issue as I’ll upgrade like everyone else. While the App Store works perfectly fine for most of the Apps out there, there are some that will have issues with Sandboxing, etc.

I do agree with EricS, however, as a developer, I’d also love to see a blog post about what issues you encountered which proved to be too much for Panic to overcome. I’m going to assume that these issues are related to new features that you’ve implemented/plan to implement, so you may not be able to talk about them until the release, but bringing the issues up for positive community discourse would be appreciated.

davebarnes

Yannik

I would really like if Coda 2.5 could be available over the Mac App Store, but I can understand your reasons. Will you run Panic Sync on your own local server (in your office) or will you host it elsewhere and if so where?

Tyler Clark

Dre

It is too bad. What if I like the App Store and iCloud sync and don’t want it any other way? IMHO I think that you haven’t worked hard enough to find a work around the problem or you’re too eager to get something out that just currently is not possible. What is so important that would allow you to not sandbox Coda? I have been a supporter of Panic for many years! I would love to know the technical side of things as to why you have made this decision.

Christian

Can I just say, Panic, that you are one of the coolest companies ever? I really like Coda2, using it every day for all kinds of projects. It just gets better, including some of the best regex support among text editors.

Joshua Nozzi

Consider adopting Drew’s Ensembles for provider-agnostic syncing: http://ensembles.io – You can write your own custom storage layer but it serves as an adaptor for syncing Core Data stores with multiple providers (iCloud and Dropbox are built in). You can still leverage PanicSync and easily add Dropbox and others. If you ever get sand boxing working for Coda you can just “turn on” iCloud. Just an idea. :-)

Transfer

Jack

Interesting, it feels like a statement to apple – I just had my sister buy a mac and one reason was the safety of the app store. I don’t think not being there will hurt in the short run – anyone who’s going to code in javascript and upload files is certainly capable of buying direct, but the long term effect will be a loss of exposure and marketing, and sales This will be crippling to Panic. You are currently #110 in the US app store overall, and #2 in the developer category. Thats a heck of a lot to walk away from. Are you sure this is the right move and that there is NO way to figure this out?

Marty Plumbo

James

I love Coda, and I want it. Apparently it’s an interesting time to buy it… I have $25 in App Store credit that I’ve otherwise been unable to spend (for a lack of anything I actually want), and while saving 33% on Coda would be swell, I don’t want to A) make my life more difficult in a scenario in which I get a new Mac or B) screw Panic out of significant profit by going through the MAS.

So I guess my question is, if I buy Coda 2 from the MAS, will Panic go for the “product key upgrade approach”, where it is converted to a “Panic Direct” (if you will) copy, not a MAS copy… because the App Store credit is on an old account I keep forgetting about, and while I’d like to spend the rest of the credit on it so I can safely forget about it, I don’t want to have to hold onto it every time I need to re-download Coda.

I won’t be too disappointed either way, because Coda 2.5 looks absolutely boss, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

Jason

While I hate to see developers struggle, I am happy to see such a prominent developer break from requirements to do what is right for both the app and its user base. Apple seems to want to box everyone into this one size fits all approach and I love hearing someone put the challenge to them.

A consumer is not the same as a professional user. Professionals can be consumers, but when it comes to professional-level duties, it is about time Apple realize that there is time and place for making things idiot-proof and time and place to let those that have the experience, expertise and resources have the ability to get the most out of their machines.

We need companies like Panic to show that we need two os ecosystems – consumer and pro. Let consumer go iOS. Let them have everything spoon-fed to them. But, let professional users have all of the capabilities they paid good money to gain access to. Stop killing abilities and making us hack our machines or the process to achieve results that make a difference. Apple used to have faith in those that used its machines. Today, it has become all about how to limit exposure. Are those two mutually exclusive?

Jackson

Thanks, Panic. This is the exact reason I purchased the direct version and the MAS version. I knew updates would trickle in slowly over MAS and someday there’d be a big issue like this. Thanks for doing right by your customers (I expect nothing less from you gentlemen).

Zachary

Now that Apple just announced that iCloud is now open to all Apps does that effect the plan to move to Panic Sync? Apple opening up iCould to all Apps shows that they understand that not all Apps need to be in in the MAS.

Ian Leon

Christopher G

I’m currently an iOS and OS X app developer, and I got to say that I really understand your frustrations. I’ve been developing apps for couple of years and what I don’t understand is, what is holding down you guys to overcome the sandbox limitations? There is always a solution to a problem, no matter how complex the problem is, the solutions are always in front of our noses but we’re focusing to much in features instead of focusing on working around to find a solution that resolves the problem and that’s why you guys had not overcome those sand boxing problems. Inspire your selves and go to the Mac App Store, to see all the very complex apps that had successfully overcome this issues!
This is the time to prove yourself and to your customers that you guys are real software engineers, real computer scientists and real app developers. Aren’t you?

Tobi

Byron Fay

It’s tough to contain my level of excitement for 2.5!! Ignore the naysayers or critics and release it when you are ready. I use Coda 8-10 hours daily developing for my clients, and I couldn’t imagine switching to anything else. You have an amazing product and you should be proud of the creative, imaginative, and brilliant development team you have assembled. If you say that the App store isn’t the way to go, I empathize with your frustration and sincerely hope people will see that the limitations imposed on you were worth curtailing. Keep giving us carrots every now and again on the cool features we eagerly await, but don’t stress about artificial timelines. With the level of quality all of your software shows, I’m certain that this update will bring more positive attention towards a truly fantastic product. One feature request which has been echoed many times would be for an improved searching function across a project. I’m very excited to see what enhancements have been made to an already phenomenal program! Good luck!

Cam

Andrew

I’m of two minds here… First, I want panic to hurry the heck up and give us an update already. I have used Coda from the early days and have loved it a lot (until recently but more on that later). Coda really is one of the most innovative editors out there and with the ability to add so many plugins – and add them so much easier than the likes of Sublime – it really has been a great app to work with and I have recommended it to friends many times.
Now for the other half of my brain… The updates to Coda seem to come out too slowly, which is surprising considering that Panic ragged on the app store because of slow updates. Also, recently, my Coda has been really screwing me up. I keep getting piles of these .conflict files everywhere throughout my projects. With my work we use Git and it’s making life hell. So, for the Git based work I’ve been force to switch to Sublime where I don’t get those files. I can’t for the life of me figure out where they are coming from or why they appear, but it seems to have coincided with a somewhat recent update. I’ve liked this program so much that I’m not ready to abandon it and I’m praying that 2.5 brings far better (and easier) version control, source formatting standards checking, better import/export functionality between versions (when I upgraded to 2.0 I lost ALL my customizations and trying to bring them over from 1.7 just didn’t work), dock icons for sites (so I can quickly open sites instead of opening coda and locating the site I want) and finally the ability to us my own image (from my hard drive) for the icon for sites instead of having it grab a screenshot, which in many cases results in a white page because of security issues.

Carl Moebis

Elliot

WordPress Developer here. My two pence I’m looking at advanced IDEs like NetBeans and PHP Storm on the one hand and brackets.io / atom.io on the other hand which live integration and a fresh approach to web development.

It would be great if Coda would innovate into this web development space but it feels like we will just have a UI update, bug fixes and a plugin repo. I really hope the team innovate rather than renovate with 2.5 but from the few twitter pics this does not seem to likely.

DJ

I bought Coda the first day it came out and used it for a while since I was a huge, and still am, Transmit fan. While others have progressed, Coda has become quite stagnant and it makes me sad. Ultimately, I think this drawn out update is purely a marketing ploy to get you to purchase at a discount because they need operating capital and more money for rent for their new offices the so brazenly flaunt to all of us. I have seen many a company and worked for a few who’ve had success, get a big head, build a monument to that success, and then die because they were too busy being proud of themselves. So Panic, please focus on the work and forget about your fancy new office and trying to be cool. Stop living off legacy, it will be your downfall.

Dave C

Hi! I’ve joined a company that uses Coda 2 as it main coding software. I’m planning to buy it for myself to continue developing at home but I have a question. If I buy Coda2 now will I be able to update to Coda2.5 for free? Or it’s better to wait for the new version release?
And the last one is… Can I try 2.5 Beta? I use to test a lot of beta apps and It will be a pleasure to try Coda2.5 beta.
Regards from Spain!

Vincent

bruce

Nearly 3 months since this blog post and no update or sign of 2.5. I think either the sandboxing issues are absolutely crippling or Panic has shifted focus away from Coda to other things…. which is a worry.

Andrew

I concur; it’s been far too long since any sort of update on the status of this product. As a paying customer since the OG Coda days, I’m a little miffed at the lack of any apparent target for release and the limit of communication to the occasional “It’s coming soon, we promise!” response on Twitter.

Mitchell

Vitor Marques

INTRO:
Great Job Guys, one more fan here. Started working with coda 1 year ago and got addicted.

SUGGESTION: Work Log, per site / user / computer
Based on save file date-time, possibly on SVM (git?) submission, gap between saves may determine session concept, average interval may determine average time-to-save, inferring work time per file (a bit risky but accurate enough in terms of “programmers clock”) thus allowing to determine the first save calculated time.
In the whole, this would be useful to determine the global cost of a project and even a bit more, the participation of each member; an effort timeline and other stuff you’d realize. After all they have to save their work in files and if everybody is working with coda (yummy for panic) me like many others would get this precious information out of a snap.

SIGNATURE
I am a developper / entrepreneur / manager. Various achievements, latest was CardFive, sold to an American corporation, got 75% worldwide sales of a market niche. No vanity, Just to get your attention.
Working now on a new project (web based) I expect to be big (wish me luck), using coda intensively.

Carl Moebis

Yeah, I might have to switch over to another IDE too. I’m too worried about how long Panic takes to push out updates. When I asked to join the beta several months ago they said they were already in the final stages of release, so I patiently waited….. patiently…. waited…. … .. . . . . .

Dave Cordes

The lack of transparency is a bit frustrating to say the least. I float back and forth from Coda 2 to Eclipse and back again. I really want to stick with Coda 2 but the lack of features makes me rethink it. Panic needs to step up to the plate and let their users know what’s going on. I mean really, over 4 months and no word?

Alexander Frost

Biff

I just installed it and cannot publish to my remote sites anymore. I tried rebuilding one of my sites and also tried creating a new site. Either way, as I said, I cannot publish any files unless I manually drag them from my local site to my remote site. Also, I noticed that it can be very sluggish at times as I program. I tried closing out other apps and restarting my Mac. Neither fixed any of my issues.

Tom

@Biff I also have to provide a slash at every site for the remote path which was not the case before. Additionally, some sites seem to have switched to sFTP from FTP, so I had to correct that, too. Then publishing worked again.

Astaya

Sorry, but i have a question. I have three mac’s for my work. With MAS i can install one copy of Coda to all of them. What i need to do now? Buy some copies or deactivate one to switch on another? Or i can use my serial for all copies of my Apple ID?

mcm inc

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